Гальперин И. Р. Стилистика английского языка

"That there food is good."
"Is this 'ere (here) hall (all) you've done?" he shouts out.
There is another characteristic feature of colloquial language, namely, the insertion into the utterance of words without any meaning, which are appropriately called "fill-ups" or empty words. To some extent they give a touch of completeness to the sentence if used at the end of it or, if used in the middle, help the speaker to fill the gap when unable to find the proper word. Illustrative is the use of 'and all' in Holden's speech in Salinger's novel "The Catcher in the Rye." Here are some examples:
"She looked so damn nice, the way she kept going around and around in her blue coat and alt."
"... splendid and clear-thinking and all."
"... he is my brother and all."
Such words and set expressions as well, so to say, you see, you know, you understand, and all, as well as what may be called "mumbling words" like -m-m, er-r, also belong to the category of fill-ups.
The syntactical peculiarities of the spoken language are perhaps not so striking as the lexical ones, but more than any other features they reveal the true nature of the spoken variety of language, that is, the situational character of the communication.
The first of them is what is erroneously called ellipsis, that is, the omission of parts of the utterance easily supplied by the situation in which the communication takes place. These are in fact not omissions, but the regular absence of parts unnecessary in lively conversation when there are two or more people speaking. Here are some absolutely normal and legitimate constructions which have missing elements in the spoken language, elements which are, however, indispensable in the written language:
"Tell you what."
"Who you with? (Who are you with?)"
"Care to hear my ideas about it?"
"Ever go back to England?"
"Just doing a short story to kill the time."
A second feature is the tendency to use the direct word-order in questions or omit the auxiliary verb, leaving it to the intonation to indicate the grammatical meaning of the sentence, for example:
"Scrooge knew Marley was dead?" (Dickens) "Miss Holland look after you and all that?"
Unfinished sentences are also typical of the spoken language, for example, 'If you behave like that I'll....'
There is a syntactical structure with a tautological subject which is also considered characteristic of colloquial English. It is a construction in which two subjects are used where one is sufficient reference. Usually they are noun and pronoun, as in:
'He was a kind boy, Harry.' 'Helen, she was there. Ask her.'
In the spoken language it is very natural to have a string of sentences without any connections or linked with and, that servant of all work, for example:
'Came home late. Had supper and went to bed. Couldn't sleep, of course. The evening had been too much of a strain.'
It has already been pointed out that the spoken variety of language is far more emotional than its counterpart, due mainly to the advantage the human voice supplies. This emotiveness of colloquial language has produced a number of syntactical structures which so far have been little investigated and the meaning of which can hardly be discerned without a proper intonation design. Here are some of them:
"Isn't she cute!"
"Don't you tell me that."
"A witch she is!"
"And didn't she come over on the same boat as myself!"
"He fair beats me, does James!"
"Clever girl that she is!"
"You are telling me!"
"There you have the man!"
"Somebody is going to touch you with a broomstick!"
The characteristic syntactical features of the written variety of language can easily be perceived by the student of language. As the situation must be made clear by the context, the utterance becomes more exact. That means the relations between the parts of the utterance must be precise. Hence the abundance of all kinds of conjunctions, adverbial phrases and other means which may serve as connectives. As someone has said, a clear writer is always conscious of a reader over his shoulder. He must explain. Most of the connecting words were evolved in the written language and for the most part are used only there. Such connectives as moreover, furthermore, likewise, similarly, nevertheless, on the contrary, however, presently, eventually, therefore, in connection with, hereinafter, henceforth, have a decidedly bookish flavour and are seldom used in ordinary conversation.
Another syntactical feature of the written language is its use of complicated sentence-units. The written language prefers hypotaxis to parataxis; long periods are more frequent than short utterances. The monologue character- of the written language forcibly demands logical coherence of the ideas expressed and the breaking of the utterance into observable spans; hence units like the supra-phrasal unit and the paragraph (see pp. 193 – 198).
The words and word-combinations of the written language have also gained recognition as a separate layer of the English vocabulary. Richard D. Altick, Prof. of English at the Ohio State University, calls many phrases that tend to be bookish "space-wasters". These are despite the fact (= although); in the matter of (= about); a long period of time (= a long time); in the capacity of (= as); resembling in nature (= like); reach a decision (= decide); met with the approval of Jones (= Jones approved); announced himself to be in favour of (= said he favoured) and others. However, these "space-wasters" cannot always be so easily dispensed with, and Prof. Altick seems not to take into consideration the subtle difference in meaning carried by such pairs as in the capacity of and as, resembling in nature and like. Of course, there are the "hightalkers" who frequently over-indulge in bookishness of expression, thus causing a natural protest on the part of ordinary readers. J. D. Adams, an American linguist and critic, gives an example of such over-bookishness from an Academy of Science report:
"The evolution of an optimum scientific payload will require a continuing dialogue among all potential investigators and the engineers responsible for implementing their scientific goals."
Then he gives what he calls a "possible translation":
"Finding the right cargo will require continuing conferences of those working on the project."¹
It is worthy of note that most of the ridicule poured on the bookish language used by different writers is concentrated on the vocabulary. Little or no mockery is made of the syntactical pattern, even though in the long run it is this feature that has as great a weight as any of the others in distinguishing the written from the spoken language. The syntactical structure, no matter how complicated it may be, reflects the essential difference between the two varieties of language, and is accepted without question: Any syntactical pattern of the written variety will always show the interrelation between the parts of the utterance, so there is nothing to hinder the reader in grasping the whole. This is the case with prose writing.
With regard to poetry, the situation is somewhat different. Recent observations on the peculiarities of the language of modern English and American poetry have proved that it is mainly the breach of syntactical laws that hinders understanding to a degree that the message becomes undecodable. Coherence and logical unity backed up by purely linguistic means is therefore an essential property of the written variety of language.
The bookish vocabulary, one of the notable properties of the written language, may, on the contrary, go beyond the grasping powers of even the most intelligent reader and may very frequently need inter pretation.